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Izzard Takes NYC By Storm

By Oliver Ludwig
Reuters

Contributed by Elizabeth Parker & Jodie Miller
New York City

Once Eddie Izzard finishes winning over New York audiences with his one-man stand-up act and his dazzling purple fingernail polish, the English comedian will start working on getting a gig in, of all places, Moscow.

If anyone is up to the challenge of using English to tickle the funny bones of Muscovites, it is Eddie Izzard, whom fellow British comic John Cleese considers the funniest man in England today. Izzard has already dared to bring stand-up to France, where he says the comedic form does not really exist, and even has the audacity to perform there in French.

He recognizes few cultural boundaries when it comes to humor, insisting he can find common ground with at least some of the people in just about any place on Earth. Actually, the word stand-up does not quite do justice to how Izzard draws his audiences into his world and then leaves them bent over with laughter. For one thing, he is a lot nicer than most stand-up comics, so no one gets picked on.

He seems to be enjoying himself so much it is hard not to join the fun. And he sets a special tone ahead of his shows and during intermission, using rocking dance tracks and flashy disco lights so that all seems perfectly normal when he strolls insouciantly onstage dressed in varying degrees of feminine attire. He is, after all, a transvestite, or "TV" as he sometimes describes himself.

"It's a mixture of theater and rock 'n' roll with stand-up thrown into the middle of it," Izzard told Reuters in an interview in New York, where he is performing his latest show "Dress To Kill."

CAREFULLY CRAFTED RUBBISH

Izzard's feminine get-up -- in the latest show he dresses all in black with a Jean Paul Gaultier Chinese house coat, vinyl pants and high-heeled open-toed sandals that reveal vampy toenail polish -- has almost nothing to do with his humor.

His humor rarely touches on sexuality except, for example, when he calls himself a "male lesbian" or describes his youth as a "male tomboy" fancying not only soccer but also girls and more than a little makeup too.

He says he is part of a nonsexist, nonracist alternative comedy scene that developed in England in the late 1970s, which may explain why his almost childlike persona lacks the hostile or cynical edge favored by so many stand-up comics.

His passion is for what he calls "carefully crafted rubbish," a broad category of material that includes everything from politics and history to religion and pop culture. "I like to take big ideas and talk about them so that it seems like I don't know what I'm talking about even though I know what I'm talking about," he said.

Izzard seems relieved that so few stand up comics mine world history for the rich material it provides him, and he insists he can make any audience laugh using historical events as long as he begins his joking with a little background.

"I don't really see people saying, 'Anyway, so Alexander the Great, he was steaming into Persia, OK?"' Izzard said, his gray-blue eyes brightening. "No one goes into that. But you can make it come alive. You've just got to explain it."

In "Dress To Kill," Izzard explores Henry VIII's problems, the origins of Easter eggs and the Easter bunny, the 1969 moon landing by American astronauts, the brainstorming that came up with the name of singer Engelbert Humperdinck and one subject he finds especially humorous, the origins of the prehistoric stone formations at Stonehenge in England.

In that hilarious bit he portrays the anguished workers carrying the huge stones, then switches to playing a modern architect type who cheerfully tells the miserable workers: "Don't worry you'll really like it. It's going to look great."

FROM MOSCOW TO 'FRISCO'

Izzard is also starting to appear in films this year, including "The Avengers" opposite Sean Connery, but it is clear he wants to build on his stage show rather than appear in television comedies.

"Dress To Kill," his second New York show in less than a year, has twice been extended for a total of more than eight weeks at the Westbeth Theatre in Greenwich Village and he is thinking of new places he can perform his shtick such as Moscow and San Francisco once the show wraps up in early June.

"Next year I hope to do 'From Moscow to Frisco,"' Izzard said, unveiling the working title of the show. As long as he plays the right venues, such as universities where young people are hungry for learning English and a bit of fun, everything will turn out right in Moscow or any other city, he says.

Izzard's remarkable optimism goes well beyond his ambition to perform in unlikely places, extending into areas like Europe's ongoing economic and political integration which, unlike many British citizens, he supports wholeheartedly.

"What I'm doing in going and playing France with my carefully crafted rubbish that's translated into French just shows what Europeans could do if they put their minds to it.I'm a very 'cup half-full' person," he said, quickly reconsidering his answer. "I'm a cup three-quarters full person. No, actually, the cup's overflowing."

FUNNIEST MAN IN ENGLAND

John Cleese, the backbone of the English comedy troupe Monty Python that gave Izzard some of the inspiration to quit college and perform full time, agrees, saying Izzard's good nature sets him apart from most other stand-up comics.

"What is unusual about Eddie is that most comics are a depressed, angry and maladjusted bunch by and large, and he is as low on anger and resentment as any comic I've ever seen," Cleese said in a telephone interview during which he often broke into laughter as he talked about Izzard.

"He also has an extraordinary degree of relaxation and in that he reminds me of the old vaudeville performers," Cleese said, adding that he now knows Izzard well enough to see that the relaxation is genuine and not a put-on.

He said Izzard's extraordinary relaxation may explain why the laughs start almost the moment he arrives onstage. "Going on so relaxed you catch the mood of the audience instead of imposing it on them," Cleese said, adding that many other stand-up comics feign relaxation.

"I think he has made me laugh more than anyone else in England in the last two or three years. I've been in comedy for over 30 years and by the end of it you've seen a lot of stuff. It's very very unusual to see something fresh like Eddie."

Cleese does have one criticism. He says Izzard's penchant for spontaneity hurts his comic timing and that just a slightly tighter script would make him even funnier. "What he loves more than anything is not knowing what he's going to do next."

Izzard seems to agree, saying he makes each show different just so he does not grow bored. "Every night is about 10 to 15 percent different. It's a big journey between two places, the beginning and the end, and I can go off on any tangent at any point."

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